Tuesday, 4 August 2009

Salzburg 2009 - Mozart, Nono, Handel

Salzburg is where I'd like to be ..... especially as many of my friends are there. Or in Bayreuth. Keep an eye on http://boulezian. blogspot.comone of the blogs listed at right below. Mark is a Salzburg and Bayreuth regular and really knows his stuff! To whet your appetite, read Andrew Clark in the Financial Times.

Così fan tutte seems very good indeed:"Now comes a staging that, though far from perfect, brings Così back into the reckoning as a Salzburg speciality. It marks the culmination of a Da Ponte trilogy directed in consecutive years by Claus Guth, and it is easily the most impressive of the three. Guth’s achievement ........ is to lend Mozart’s “school for lovers” a contemporary sheen without stretching credibility or denying the opera’s inner logic." Read more HERE

The one I really wanted to see, Luigi Nono's Al gran sole carico d'amore. This is a real rarity. It's not at all "easy listening" , a powerful piece about the horrors of capitalism. Tickets cost about 300 Euro which, plus travel and accomodation, puts it beyond the means of real Nono fans. What those who could afford to go made of it, who knows? There were also recitals and talks connected with this, for those Nono fans who could make it. (Please let me know if you want details, the talk by Carola Neilinger-Vakil is important, she's the best Nono writer around). I'll curl up with the old Luther Zagrosek recording which is a bit muted, dreaming of what Metzmacher might do. It's hard to imagine the Vienna Philharmonic in this repertoire but then they've responded well to Metzmacher - they did Messiaen Eclairs sur l'au-delà with him and sound surprisingly idiomatic. The Salzburg cast, well-known UK singers, are not Nono specialists, so apart from one, the singing may be an unknown quality. Read the FT article HERE and follow the labels on the right for the MANY things I've done about Luigi Nono.

Then, Handel's Theodora with Christine Schäfer, good strong cast including Bernarda Fink, and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra who alone would have made this production worthwhile, they're so good. It's directed by Christof Loy, who did the amazing abstract Lulu and will be directing the new Royal Opera House Tristan und Isolde. Anything would be better than the 1996 Glyndebourne Theodora, with Star Wars set and clumpy costumes, making Dawn Upshaw and Lorraine Hunt Liebermann look so ludicrous I switched off the video to listen. Read the FT report HERE.

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